The Cause and Effects of Acid Mine Drainage

Acidity of an ecosystem, measured in pH, is a crucial factor to the survival of a species in an ecosystem. Altering it can have result in dramatically negative effects, in spite of the fact that pH of an ecosystem has been dramatically changed over a relatively short period of time due to various human activities. For example, acid rain is a major environmental problem that is caused by human-made pollution. When fossil fuels are burnt to get energy, pollutants like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides get mixed into the rainwater and eventually are evaporated into the atmosphere. These gases enter the atmosphere, and mix with water in the water cycle to form an acidic mixture of water and gases. This water falls in the form of acid rain, which

pH is also known as a measure of hydrogen ions in a solution. A hydrogen ion is the nucleus of a hydrogen atom being split from its electron. Studying the pH of different types of soil being placed in a control group such as tap water will represent the acidity or alkalinity of the matter. The pH scale begins at 0 and goes all the way up to 14, pH 7 being its neutral point, which isn’t acidic or basic. A neutral point on the acidic scale is in the middle, anything lower than the neutral point (7), is acidic, and anything higher than the neutral point is considered basic or “alkaline”.

The environment is dying, it cant get oxygen like it needs therefore it cant produce the oxygen everyone else needs. The plants and vegetation dies eventually kill the animals and when the animals

through. The chemicals are then able to move through the ground and into many vital water

PH is . a numeric scale used to specify the acidity or alkalinity of an aqueous solution. The tests my group and I did was Dissolved Oxygen, Nitrate, phosphate, and the alkalinity tests. We also tested the rocks to see if they could neutralize the rocks. Neutralize renders something in effective or harmless applying an opposite force of effect. The two rocks that we studied were limestone and sandstone.

First discussion is on drain tile. Farmers in the red river valley are in controversy over if it is or isn’t but according to facts it is actually better for the soil and for farmers due to they can get in the fields faster,get crops and at the same time control the water table. With the ability to control the water table the farmers can ensure that they wouldn’t lose as many crops to water damage.

In lake sas man has built a dam, but to the elevation of the sampling site the team believes that the dame does not effect the soil. The soil sampling site appears to be in a natural state. No human impact effected the sampling site, the samples collected are relatively accurate to the natural soil state.

Turbidity can be caused by heavy rains, cutting down trees in the area which loosens soil

evaporate back on land, making the plants living under water die from the lack of carbon dioxide

If the pH of a solution is decreased from 7 to 6, it means the concentration of

A very basic experiment that could be used to display the erosion effects of acid rain on rocks, in relation to varying ph strengths of acids is could be as follows:

Its pH changes very little when a small amount of strong acid or base is added to it. This phenomenon can be represented in this lab by the equation [ H2CO3 + H+ ⇌HCO3-]. This equation represents the inverse relationship between the amount of hydrogen ions in a solution and its respective pH. Without a buffer, if the number of hydrogen ions (H+) in a solution increases, the pH decreases, causing the solution to become more acidic. The opposite is true if the amount of hydrogen ions in a solution decreases. Therefore, when five (5) drops of HCl were added to salt water, the pH fell from 7.96 to 6.01, and when five (5) drops of NaOH were added to the same solution, the pH increased from 7.47 to 11.18. Without the presence of a buffer, most solutions react similarly to the salt water. However, with the presence of the buffer, the pH of a substance will change very little, if at

The distilled used in this experiment was slightly acidic with a pH of 5.27 when water should have been around a pH of 7. This could have been because carbon dioxide in the air may have been absorbed into the distilled water.

Erosion has caused an issue with the contamination of water. Dave Favis-Mortlock stated that, “Movement of sediment and associated agricultural pollutants into watercourses . . . This leads to . . . contamination of drinking water.” These pollutants can enter into drinking water and harm those who drink it. Also, he says that, “Erosion rates do not have to be high for significant amounts of pollutants to make it into the water.” So, due to this our water can be in a state of constant pollution even if our river’s erosion rates are slow. Therefore, erosion has caused an issue with the contamination of water.

In order to test this, method of serial dilution was first utilized to find the amount of buffer solution needed for the